Activity

Last year witnessed a “marked resurgence” in Iran’s global terror activity, according to evaluations released yesterday by the U.S. State Department as part of the Department’s annual report on terrorism. The report identified the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’s Qods Force, Iran’s ministry of intelligence, and Hezbollah as behind the resurgence. It highlighted Iranian operations in India, Thailand, Georgia, and Kenya and concluded that Tehran is conducting and backing terrorism at “a tempo unseen since the 1990s” across Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa. The report’s release came the same day as Iranian-born Texas car salesman Manssor Arbabsiarwas sentenced to 25 years in prison for plotting to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. The State Department cited Arbabsiar’s thwarted plot as “demonstrat[ing] Iran’s interest in using international terrorism – including in the United States – to further its foreign policy goals.”